Tourist Sites

In Dover, the cliffs are white. The cliffs, massive walls of chalk, rise up straight from the grey-blue waters of the English Channel. This massive wall stands at the closest point to continental Europe, just 22 miles from the coast of France, and has for the last millennium kept all invaders from English soil. More important than physical defence, though, is the emotional place that the white cliffs have in the geography of the English psyche. In the days before planes flew vacationers back and forth from Mallorca and trains sped under the Channel, an Englishman returning home in Europe would most likely get his first glimpse of his homeland on a ferry from Calais, and the first thing he would see was those white cliffs. For England, the white cliffs symbolize home.

I’d been wanting to see the white cliffs since arriving in London. A psychologist might suggest it is to fill an emotional need upon returning to the land of my ancestors, that I need to see this symbol of home to find my place here in my ancient and current home. I would probably counter that I just thought it was cool.

Either way, after a week of watching depressing reports on the BCC about how the Lehman Brother’s collapse, the take-over of the Halifax Bank of Scotland, the falling stock market and the general depression in the square mile was likely to cause ripple effects across the economy, I felt like getting away. While the job hunt seems to be picking up, with more and more job postings appearing and more calls from recruiters, all this talk of recession, record breaking stock-market machinations and comparisons to the depression of the 1930s had me a little gloomy.

So, on Thursday night I booked myself a B&B in Dover and downloaded the South-Eastern train schedule to figure out when the trains ran. I felt quite pleased with myself, but that didn’t last long. I mentioned my trip to one of my flatmates and the first words out of his mouth were, “I heard it sucks.”

Crestfallen, I asked, “have you been there?”

“No, but I heard from a coworker that it is kind of dirty and industrial.”

I retreated upstairs to my bedroom and got my Lonely Planet Europe on a Shoestring down from the shelf. In a short and somewhat dismal entry, Dover was dismissed as a “gateway town” that “is an uninspiring melange of ferry port access routes.”

I decided not to let this rather bad news about the destination deter me from my visit. That, and it was too late to cancel my B&B reservation, so unless I wanted to write off £34, I was going to Dover.

Waking up on Saturday morning to a beautiful and sunny day, my spirit of adventure was restored. I checked my South-Eastern schedule one last time, and made my way to London Bridge station to catch the train to Dover.

At London Bridge, I passed by the long line for tickets and bought mine from an automated ticket machine, feeling quite smug as I skipped by the suckers in line waiting to talk to a person, my tickets in hand. Looking up at the electronic departures board wiped the smug smile from my face.

“Dover - See Posters,” it said. Normally where the destination was followed by a platform number so you knew where the next train to your destination was going. Instead I got a message to look at a piece of paper.

I walked over to the posters listing all the departures, my roller bag trailing behind me. I tried to make sense of the long list of numbers and notations, but couldn’t quite make out what it was trying to tell me. Next I wandered over to the route map and stared blankly at that for a few minutes, hoping that it might hold some clues for me, but the more I looked at it the more it just became blurry blue, red and purple lines on a white background.

I consulted one of the station workers who announced rather definitively platform 5 without consulting anything. “Hmm, must be a smart guy to have memorized all the train schedules and platforms,” I thought to myself as I wandered over to platform 5.

The signs at platform 5 showing the next trains departing from there didn’t mention anything about Dover, however. Trains heading to Gravesend and Gillingham, but no Dover. I tried staring at the destination posters and route maps again, hoping that they might somehow make more sense now that I was at the other side of the station, but to no avail. After 10 minutes of trying to independently figure out where I was going, I swallowed my pride and consulted another station worker.

This one didn’t just answer, but instead pulled out a booklet listing all the South-Eastern departures across London. He looked through all the entries until he found a train to Dover. “Yup, here. 10:23, from Charing Cross.”

Just to make sure, I looked up at the name on the platform. London Bridge. “Right, does it stop here,” I asked.

“No, but you can get the next train to Charing Cross and then change at Waterloo East. The Dover train will arrive there at 10:26.”

So I found myself catching a train that travelled for 3 minutes closer to the centre London, just to catch a train back in other direction. Soon we cleared Waterloo East station and were chugging along to the south-eastern coast of England.

I felt immediately better as the train started moving. At first I thought it was just relief after the mix ups between me and train schedule, but then it sunk in that it was something more.

Partly it felt good to be doing something productive with an immediate pay off, even if that productivity is simply a small bit of tourism. Job hunting is hard work, and while I know all the surfing the internet job sites, updating and emailing CVs to recruiters and getting dressed up for interviews is all leading someplace (hopefully to a job), it can feel like a Sisyphean task. A lot of action and energy expended without any results. Going to Dover and seeing the cliffs was a small thing, but it was something I had wanted to do in the U.K., so it felt like I was accomplishing something.

More than just feeling productive though, it felt good to be on the move to somewhere new.

I realized that I actually quite enjoyed the thought that I was going somewhere, that I was back on the road. Well, rails, but you get the point. As the train travelled across the English countryside, I read from Will Ferguson’s Hokkaido Highway Blues, where the author hitchhikes from the southern tip to the northern tip of Japan. A few quotes jumped out at me.

First, about a bunch of kids off travelling, they ”...set off in pursuit of experience and a never-ending present.”

Then, as he recounts travel stories to one of the people who picked him up, he realizes that those experiences are “just postcards, really, when all is said and done. And the though gnawed at my heart: everything I have done, a collection of postcards, like a zeotrope made to resemble motion...”

It got me wondering if perhaps 10 years of consulting and travelling has taken me to a place where I can’t be happy with a home base, that I must constantly set off in pursuit of the never-ending present, and when all is said and done, is it nothing but a series of vignettes that resemble a coherent story, but really aren’t anything more than snapshots?

I mulled it over for a moment, but didn’t come up with any answer. All I knew was that I was happy to be in motion, that all the doom and gloom about the economy that I had watched, perhaps too intently, all week had fallen off me, leaving me smiling and happy. And that was a good thing.

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An hour and a half after leaving London, the train arrived at Dover Priory rail station. With a name like Dover Priory, I expected that the train would pull up into a chamber underneath a baroque cathedral, but the train station is just a regular looking train station, with 3 platforms and a small station house. No friars or nuns in sight.

In a small bit of advanced planning, I had memorized directions from the train station to the B&B I was staying at. Turn left out of the station, walk along the road until you get to Masion Dieu Road, and than turn right. Then, in a small bit of sabotage against my advanced planning, I didn’t follow those directions.

It was for a good cause, though. High up on the cliffs above Dover stands a castle, parts of which dates back to 1180. Arriving just after noon, the sun was high in the sky and casting its light on the castle walls, lighting it up. It was an impressive sight, and so I cut through a park to get a better look.

After checking out the view, I continued to head towards Maison Dieu Road. Cutting through the park for the castle view had put me a couple streets further south than my memorized directions, so upon reaching Maison Dieu, I wasn’t sure if I should turn right or left. I choose right.

I choose wrong.

Luckily Dover isn’t too big a town, so once Masion Dieu turned into Woolcomber and appeared to dead end, I knew I had chosen incorrectly, and backtracked to find the Penny Farthing Guest House.

I was greeted at the door by co-proprietor Annette, who was impressed by my promptness. When booking the place on-line, I had put an arrival time of 12:30. I looked at my watch. 12:30 on the dot. Good thing I took that wrong turn, otherwise I would have showed up 3 minutes too early.

As Annette showed me up the stairs, she gave me a tour while continuing discussing people who show up at times other than when they said they would.

“That’s the dining room. So many people say they will be here at noon, but then show up at 3. That’s your bathroom. ‘Oh, we decided to grab lunch,’ they will say. This is your room. Here’s the key. Because I have to be here when they arrive, it can really throw off my schedule when they don’t show up. Here’s some clean towels, and your shower is right here. That’s the problem with the internet bookings, you never talk to the person on the phone to work out things. Breakfast, if you want it, is £4 and is served from seven until quarter to nine. No pressure, either way. Let me know later tonight if you want it,” and with that she was away, leaving me to examine my room.

It was a nice room, with a single, comfy bed, a sink, a museum piece of a TV set and a shower. The toilet was down the hall, though was my “private” toilet as all the other rooms had their own toilets, or so I think. The room had tall ceilings, and with that came a massive window looking out onto Maison Dieu road.

Room examined, I dumped my bag and headed out to see the White Cliffs. On the way out, I ran into Annette again.

“What brings you to Dover? Here to see the white cliffs?” she asked.

“Yes, I live in London and thought it would be...” I said, but didn’t finish my sentence as Annette started speaking again.

“As you are on foot, I think the best thing for you to do is go the long way to the cliffs. The main road just has a thing strip of pavement and the cars go along so fast. I really think its quite dangerous. What you want to do is walk out of the house and turn left, then when the road ends, turn left again. Keep to your left when the road forks, and you’ll come to a set of stairs. Once at the top of those, just start walking,” she said, finishing with a smile.

“Thanks,” I said. I walked out of the house, turned left and, for the second time that day, ignored the directions I had and turned right. Again it was for a good cause, this time it was to get some money, as I only had £3 on me, and to get some lunch.

I walked to the Market Square. The day was beautiful, sunny and warm, and many folks were sitting on the benches of the square, soaking up the sun.

I took out some cash and surveyed the scene. A pedestrian mall ran north from the Square and seemed to have restaurants on it, but that was the opposite direction that I wanted to go, so instead I headed South towards the water, hoping that something would appear that looked like it was serving a good lunch. Unfortunately, my choices to the south were either KFC, Kababs or Pub Snacks, none of which appealed to me.

I came out on the waterfront and got my first really good look at the cliffs rising up above the town. The centre of Dover is in a valley in the cliffs, making it a natural port. To the East and the West though the cliffs tower up above the water.

I found the stairs leading up that Annette had mentioned without finding any food, but decided to press ahead, hoping that perhaps there was a snack bar along the way. Failing that, I knew that the next town was only 5 miles away. I could probably make it that far without anything in my belly. Failing that, perhaps I could catch and eat a seagull. I was sure I’d figure something out.

Walking up the path I got my first close look at the cliffs. I ran my finger along the cliff face, and it came away covered with white chalk dust. “Just like back in school,” I thought.

Nowadays, I am sure that kids in school use whiteboards and dry erase markers, or electronic presentation boards or maybe even some manner of technology where they text their answers to the front of the class, but back when I was in school we had black boards and white chalk. Chalk always seemed to break into pieces when you tried to write with it. It seemed so frail. I looked up at the cliff face rising above me, and wondered how often chunks of frail chalk came falling down.

Often, it turns out. The cliffs recede about 2 to 5 cm a year, and large fractures can cause up to a metre of cliff face to careen down into the ocean at a single time. In fact, visitors are warned to stay a few metres back from the cliff face just in case. Actually, visitors aren’t warned. Some visitors, those that read the correct brochure are warned. The rest of us only find out about these warning post trip when researching about the cliffs online for our blogs.

While chalk is frail, it is also very hard, which anyone who has been hit in the head by a flying piece of chalk can attest to. How a substance can crumble in one case and become rock hard in the other is a mystery to science, and if I recall correctly it is one of the main discoveries that scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland are hoping to unravel.

Thinking of this dual property of chalk while reading the BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS sign, and decided that I didn’t want a big chunk of Dover chalk hitting me in the head. I imagine that it would probably hurt exponentially more than a small piece of blackboard chalk.

I was on a ridge that climbed up towards the top of the cliff, with excellent views of the ferry port. From Dover, ferries from four different companies power off to Calais, Boulogne and Dunkerque, taking cars, trucks, buses and foot passengers.

I could see why my flatmate’s friend had said the Dover was industrial feeling. With all the lorries queuing on the massive blacktop, waiting to board a ferry, it certainly has a certain commercial and functional feel to it.

I however, liked it for just that reason. I have always liked boats, much like I like trains, and enjoyed watching the ferries pull in and out of the port, loading and unloading endless streams of vehicles. I wasn’t alone, either. As I walked along a number of folks were set up along the ridge, binoculars in hand as they watched the coming and going of the big boats.

Here in England they call people like that anoraks. An anorak is a type of parka with a hood, usually fur lined. The coat is favoured by trainspotters, those hardy types that stand outside in the rain and cold and watch trains go by. For most people, trainspotting seems a rather pointless activity, and listening to a trainspotter go on and on about it invokes a similar feeling to a root canal. Thus, the trainspotters wearing anoraks lead to the slang term being applied to anyone with a arcane, dull hobby like watching trains, playing with ham radios or parading around in old Austin Minis.

I, of course, am not an anorak because I don’t know arcane facts about trains and boats. I just like to watch them. See, I’m not a nerd. I just proved it. QED.

Reaching the top of the cliff, my stomach was grumbling unhappily, so I was pleased to see a visitor information centre with a cafe. I went in and ordered a egg salad sandwich. It was excellent, with tasty chunks of egg in mayonnaise and soft, fluffy white bread. For some reason though, the crusts were tough like leather. They, like the rest of the sandwich were very tasty, but it required some serious gnawing to get through the crust.

Sated and with a new found energy, I set off from the visitor centre and along the cliffs. There was a multitude of paths, but I tried to stick as best I could to the paths closet to the cliff face. Unfortunately, this meant a number of times I found myself at a dead end where ridges suddenly ended. I found myself more than a few times having to scramble up and down steep hills or performing some manner of parcour that would have been best left to a younger man.

I noticed in my scrambles that it is much easier to climb up than it is to climb down. By this I mean that climbing seems to require nothing but physical effort, whereas climbing down requires a lot of mental and emotional effort. I would find myself at the top of a steep hill, looking down at a 45 degree angle and feel fear gripping at me. I would have to take a couple of deep breaths before starting my descent.

I have a theory why this is. Actually two theories, but I could see them working in concert.

First is one of focus. When climbing up, you are looking up. Looking up isn’t scary. No one has ever died from falling up. In fact, falling up would probably be flying, which would be cool. People dream happy dreams about flying.

When climbing down, you are looking down. People die from falling down. Falling down is painful. Throughout your downward climb, you are always looking down, towards a possible death. That’s scary.

The second theory is that gravity actually makes climbing up easier, or rather makes it more controlled. When climbing up, gravity is working in the opposite direction. You have to overcome it, which means your actions are all slow and deliberate. When climbing down, gravity is pulling you in the same direction you are travelling. It is easy to start moving too fast, to lose control and end up careening down a steep hill towards a cliff face. Climbing up is all about deliberate and slow movements to defeat gravity. Climbing down is all about trying to maintain control so you don’t die.

All that means that I am no longer impressed with people that climb up mountains and then repel down. They are skipping over the hard part. From now on, if you wish to impress me, you will repel up the mountain and climb down.

The weather was warm and the sun was shining, but atop the cliff the wind was blowing strong. Taking advantage, two women were flying a kite. The girl controlling the strings was a thin brunette with a bright smile. I watched her for a moment, and she reminded me of a girl I had met while travelling in South America. Our routes had crossed for a few days, and soon I found myself smitten with her.

Like everyone else you meet on the road and travel with for a few moments, eventually your paths diverge. We exchanged email addresses and kept in touch for a bit, but eventually the emails stopped, and I added another person to the tally of people I met and lost touch with. The older I get, the more people seem to join that list.

I walked along, thinking of people I had met on the road who I had lost touch with. Especially the women, my crushes, infatuations and dates who I shared time with and who all I have now are fuzzy memories.

Seeing the girl with the kite brought the song “Kite,” by U2 into my head. The song played in my head, providing a soundtrack to the mental slideshow of the many girls who had come and gone in my life.

In summer I can taste the salt in the sea
There's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze
I wonder what's gonna happen to you
You wonder what has happened to me

I wonder if they do? I wonder if there are times when the girl from South America ever thinks, “I wonder how Greg is.” If the girl from San Antonio ever thinks to herself, “I wonder what Greg is doing right now.” If the girl from Denver ever says, “I wonder if Greg is okay.” If the Australian from the Navimag ferry ever looks up at the Southern Cross that she pointed out to me as we lay on the deck on that clear night and thinks, “I wonder what ever happened to that Canadian boy.”

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About 20 minutes later, with images of all the girls I’ve loved before, who’ve travelled in and out my door still rotating in my head, I came to the South Foreland Lighthouse.

The lighthouse, built in the 1840s, warned ships of a nearby sand bank until it was taken out of service in 1988. Presumably there is still some warning of the sand bank and its not that people just stopped caring about shipwrecks.

The lighthouse has a place in both electrical and telecommunications history. The lighthouse was the first to have an electric light thanks to Michael Faraday, and it was the first place to receive a ship-to-shore transmission in 1899 when Guglielmo Marconi was working with radio waves.

Most people turn around at the Lighthouse and walk back to the parking lot of a the visitors centre, completing a 4 mile walk. I, however, knowing that I had an additional mile to get back to Dover on foot and feeling thirsty, decided to keep walking towards Saint Margaret’s Bay, which was only 1 mile away and offered the promise of food and drink.

Saint Margaret’s Bay is another place where cliffs dip down and provide access to the water. A rocky beach provides access to the chilly waters of the English Channel for those daring soles who dare enter the water. Not feeling daring, nor having a swimsuit, I settled for a pint and some peanuts at the Coastguard Pub and Restaurant.

Settling onto the patio with my pint of Seasider Amber Ale, I looked out over the water towards France. The Coastguard claims to be the closest English pub to France. With only 22 miles of water between it and the coast of Calais, that is probably a true claim. In fact, I could see France. Looking at the horizon, between the hazy blue-green of the water and the hazy blue-grey of the sky there was a thin strip of hazy grey-brown with a few speckles of hazy grey-white. That thin strip was France.

I finished off my pint and bag of peanuts, and debated about another pint but decided against it. I had 4 miles to put behind me before I would be back at my hotel, and I was afraid another pint would just make me sleepy. So I set off again, buoyed by the calories of protein and carbs from the beer and peanuts.

I climbed out of St. Margaret’s Bay and back up atop the cliffs.

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Continued in White Cliffs Part II: Chalk Dust On My Jeans.

University College London was founded in 1826. Prior to its founding, the only other two universities in England were Oxford and Cambridge, which only allowed men who were members of the Church of England. UCL was formed with a goal of being non-discriminatory and open to all. It was the first university in England to admit students of any race, class or religion, and the first to welcome women on equal terms with men. Even today, UCL is ranked 22nd in the world by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s annual Academic Ranking of World Universities.

There main building, above, was designed by famed architect William Wilkins, who later went on to design the National Gallery here in London as well. As you can tell by the columns, it is not surprising to learn that he toured Greece as a young man and then later became one of the most important figures in the English Greek Revival of the early 1800s.

Blah, blah, blah. Who cares? I am much too old to care about university rankings, a little old to be wandering aimless around University campuses with all the young co-eds and don't really care much for Doric, Ionic or Corinthian columns.

No, there is only one reason I went to UCL, and that was to see the DEAD GUY IN A BOX!

Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and jurist (legal dude, in plain English) who lived from 1748 until 1832. He was a well known law reformer who helped fashion the law codes of a number of countries, and pushed all his life to create a code of laws that delivered on his philosophy of delivering "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."

He is often credited with creating a design for the Panopticon, a prison which allowed the guards, positioned in the middle of the jail in an circular observation room, to see all the cells, which radiated out as spokes from the central hub, though it was an idea that he had seen when visiting his brother in Russia.

He is, however, the creator of the word international. It's hard for me to believe that no one had come up with a word to explain that concept previously, but in 1780 in his work "An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," he wrote of international jurisprudence. A footnote on the word international said the following:

The word international, it must be acknowledged, is a new one; though, it is hoped, sufficiently analogous and intelligible.

I must admit, that last night I was lying in bed trying to come up with new words myself by taking prefixes and sticking them with existing words. The best I could come up with is georecognition, which is the state of being globally recognizable. For example, "Sure, people in North America know Jessica Simpson, but Britney Spears, she's got georecognition. Even when she slinks away to the Philippines they still want to put pictures of her derriere in the magazines. They all want a piece of her." Go on, start using it. Just remember you read it here first.

Anyway, back to the DEAD GUY IN A BOX!

In Bentham's will, he requested that his friend Dr. Southwood Smith preserve his body as a mummy, which Bentham coined as being his "AUTO-ICON."

Dr. Smith obliged, but messed up the preservation of the head, robbing it of any facial expression, and thus replaced it with a wax replica. The head was preserved and kept along with the Auto-icon for a time, but now is locked away in a secure location.

Bentham was considered by many to be the spiritual father of UCL and as a proponent of women's rights and decriminalization of homosexuality, was in tune with the UCL's goal to open its doors to all, regardless of race, creed or political belief. Therefore, in 1850 University College London acquired the Auto-icon and put it on display in the South Cloisters in the main building of the College.

The cabinet contains Bentham's preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax head.

Why Bentham did this is a question that no one knows the answer to, but some speculate that it was an attempt to question religious sensibilities about life and death, to make us look at the discarded corpse of a man and wonder why we venerate the bodies of those that have passed before us.

Frankly, I just thought it was both a little cool and icky at the same time. I wonder if they dress it up for Hallowe'en? They could put cobwebs around the box, and dress Bentham up as a zombie or a ghoul!

Given the veneration that the UCL website heaps upon Bentham, maybe not. Then again, given the stories of the pranks that were rained upon poor old Jeremy's head when it was in the box, including being locked in an Aberdeen train station locker and being used for game of football, perhaps they would.

I decided to use my Saturday to go to Brugge. I really knew nothing about the city other than a few people had noted online that it was a pretty little town worth seeing, and that Colin Farrell starred in a movie called "In Brugge." I didn't see Colin Farrell, probably because he was too busy saving lives elsewhere in the world.

I did very little research prior to going to Brugge, other than figuring out what train to take, so upon arriving I pretty much just followed the crowd leaving the train station, hoping that they were tourists like I was, and not a mass of locals all heading to their houses. Luckily, they were tourists, so I ended up getting dragged to the main square and seeing the sights.

From there, I pretty much just wandered around without much of a plan or really knowing anything about the city at all. Mostly I wandered, every once and a while coming across my lifeline... the tourist map.

Usually I would do some research on the place to put all my experience into context, but today I am feeling that I shouldn't destroy my blissful ignorance, so instead I will just present the photos I took with little (if any) commentary, because I don't really know much about them other than they caught my fancy so I took a snapshot.

Behind perhaps only beer and chocolate, the most famous thing from Belgium - Tintin and his little dog Snowy!

Looks like more than just the Atomium is smurfing 50 years. Happy Smurfday, Smurfs!

As you can see, I took quite a tour of Brugge. I walked and looked and walked and looked...

...until I was tired, and stopped into a bar for a pint. That's me downing my drink, reflected in the shiny chrome of the beer taps.

After I finished my beer, I headed down to the train station, and it turned out I had some time to kill before my train, so I grabbed another pint.

All that beer made me sleepy, and not soon after this photo was taken...

...I fell asleep. Luckily I woke up before my stop. I made it back to my hotel, and made it an early night.

I have a big day on Sunday watching cars go very fast in Francochamps, just outside Spa.

I am off to Brussels for the weekend. It’s my third trip to this place in the last 4 years, which if you exclude places I have gone for work means I have visited Brussels more than any other city save Paris and London (which might not even count, because I actually live there). I must really like this place.

Truth is, I do like this place. It is a nice mix of old and new. It is small enough to be human scaled, but large enough to have anything you might want. Finally, as the capital of Europe, it is very international, and you never feel out of place as a foreigner here, for so many people seem to be from some place else.

I got a great deal on a hotel, as well. The Renaissance Brussels Hotel near Luxembourg Square was on for just €99. Having already been here twice and having stayed at hotels near the centre, I decided to stay some place a little less central (i.e. touristy) and a little more “real” (i.e. where there aren’t so many tourists).

The Renaissance is just steps from the European Parliament, so it is usually filled with Euro politicos trying to sway the balance of power in their favour (as politicos are wont to do). The area surrounding the parliament is more residential than the core of the city around the Grand Palace, so it’s both more quiet (i.e. less drunk Brits) and more lively (i.e. more locals out for a Friday night dinner and drinks).

Having already seen the beautiful yet highly touristed Grand Palace and main square, I decided to head out to an attraction that I hadn’t visited on my last two visits.

50 years ago, in 1958, the World’s Fair found itself in Brussels.

One of the displays was The Atomium, a massive construction made to look like an atom, with orbs of shiny silver connected together by gleaming white tunnels. Not much remains of the 1958 World’s Fair, but The Atomium still stands today.

The Atomium is one of those things that seems underwhelming when you see it in tourist guides or city brochures. The pictures of the place always made it look like it’s some crappy 20 foot tall structure in some abandoned car park out on the outskirts of town.

Going there, you realize that all those pictures have failed to correctly capture the scale of the Atomium. In fact, it is 102 metres tall. It is composed of nine steel spheres and apparently is designed after a cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

I took a few pictures, for example the one below, which seems to make all the same mistakes as the tourist brochures by trying to get the whole thing in one picture, which ultimately makes it seem small.

Instead, here’s some pictures I took that I hope do present the scale correctly.

The interior of the top orb, the "sky deck", giving you nice view of Brussels

Looking down at another orb from the top of the 9 orbs, with a fountain down on the ground, way below!

The escalator rides between orbs, through the white connectors, can be a bit of a trek.

Looking out on two of the other orbs from one of the centre orbs

Next up, I headed over to Mini Europe! Mini Europe promises (according to the free guide that you get when you pay admission) AN EXCITING VOYAGE THROUGH EUROPE!

Mini Europe is what we would call in Canada a “miniature village.” That is, it is a number of real and imagined buildings modelled at some scale and displayed for visitors.

Ah, you get the idea. Watch this film...

The guide book, in addition to describing the sights, also gives lots of information on the values of the Europe, the economic and political power of Europe, the powers and duties of the European parliament, European budgets and GDPs, European currency and why Europeans can’t make a decent chicken wing in their sports bars.

Okay, all but one of the above topics is covered in the handout.

Finally, headed back to Luxembourg Square near my hotel and grabbed dinner and drinks at Fat Boy’s. Fat Boy’s is a sports bar run by an American, and so I found myself sitting in Brussels, drinking Danish beer, watching British Rugby and eating an all-American cheese burger. I sat at the bar and had a few more pints while sports rotated before me on the televisions screens. American baseball, American football (on the Armed Forced Network, no less - which is just like regular TV, but with more commercials for West Pointe and PSAs on Why Not To Sexual Molest Teenagers In Iraq) and Tennis.

With that image I end, for it seems a fitting one for Brussels, a mix and match of cultures coming together in one place. I have never been to Brussels before it became the European capital so perhaps this is too grand a statement to make, but I think it was an excellent choice. It seems like a place where anyone, no matter where they are from, can come and project themselves into without seeming out of place.

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Edited to add: I realized I never explained the title of the Blog - Brussels Happiness. Brussels Happiness is the name of the series of events that Brussels has or is putting on from April until October of this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the World's Fair in 1958, including a number of exhibits that I saw at the Atomium and the creation just down the street of The Pavilion of Temporary Happiness, made (fitting for Belgium) of 33,000 beer crates. A list of all the events can be found at the Atomium website, in the event you are going to be in Brussels and want to see the world's largest atom juxtaposed against the miniature version of Europe housed next door to it.

I also added the picture of the TV showing the tennis which I meant to originally include, but somehow managed not to at the last moment.

Finally, I realize many people have already read this, and will never see this addendum. Such is life.

London is teeming with werewolves. You can hardly escape them.

I just missed capturing in full view this werewolf as he strolled down Piccadilly Street. He was about to attack the woman with the rollerbag suitcase, but saw my camera and dashed out of the frame. I clicked quick enough to just get a partial view of his hairy face in the frame.

I was reminded of this fact recently in of all places Toronto. I was listening to the top-40 radio station that was previously called The Mix but has now been rebranded as Virgin Radio. Sir Richard Branson slaps his Virgin logo on yet something else. He’s almost has hard to escape as the werewolves.

The radio was playing a new song by Kid Rock which seemed to consist of Kid Rock singing over the music from the verses of Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon and the chorus of Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Hearing the bits of the Warren Zevon song got me thinking about all the places named in Werewolves of London, and I decided I should go and check them out, keeping of course a gun loaded with silver bullets and a vial of holy water handy, just in case.

For those that don’t know the song, or those that know it and after being reminded of it want to hear it, you can listen to it on youtube and check out the lyrics at this site.

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain

In the centre of the West End is the area of Soho, a diverse area of high street shops, pubs and clubs (for both the gay and straight crowds), sex shops and residences for both the rich and the poor.

The area’s name comes from the 17th century, when the area was used for hunting. “Soho,” the hunters would call, “there is the fox.” No wonder werewolves stalk the area, they are looking for payback for the hunting of their canid brothers.

Soho seems a fitting place for werewolves, really, given the number of places that seem to cater to our most animalistic of desires, those for food, drink, sex and dance music.

He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein

If a werewolf was stalking from beef chow mein, Soho would be a good place to do it. There is some debate whether Chinatown is part of Soho or not, but it certainly is very close to it.

Lee Ho Fook’s is the name of a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, on the pedestrianized Gerrard Street at numbers 15-16.

The next part I wasn’t so much looking forward to, that of the eating of Lee Ho Fook’s offerings. Perhaps werewolves, used to supping on the raw flesh of the wiry “little old ladies” that they mutilated last night, aren’t too particular about their asian cuisine. However, the fully human customers who had reviewed the place online were unanimous in their view that the place sucked. However, as any great artist suffers for his art, I was prepared to suffer through a meal at Lee Ho Fook’s.

By art, I mean my writing, and by writing, I mean this blog. Many will dispute that this blog constitutes art. In fact, there are probably a group that would dispute the assertion that this is even writing, but I digress.

Luckily for both my art and my stomach, Lee Ho Fook’s had this sign posted on the door.

Saved by renovations!

I did, however, go to another Chinese restaurant and get a beef and noodle dish, just to keep in the spirit of the thing.

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair

While the song is about London, there is this one mention of someplace that is actually not in London. Kent is a county to the south-east of London which includes both the white cliffs of Dover and the entrance to the channel tunnel. I haven’t been to Kent, other than travelling through it on my way to Brighton and France. I mean, it sounds a scary place, what with werewolves running amuck.

Canterbury is in Kent, which is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury who is the chief Bishop of the Anglican Church. The current Archbishop is one Rowan Williams, who if you look at pictures of him, you might think him a rather hairy individual. Hmmm, werewolves in Kent and a hirsute bishop. Coincidence?

Unlike Kent, Mayfair is in London. Mayfair is just to the west of Soho and bordered on the other side of Hyde Park. The area, named after the annual fair that used to be held in the area, was one of the most fashionable residential areas in the 17th and 18th century.

Over the years the area has converted to being a mostly commercial district, including being home to a number of the most expensive and exclusive hotels in London, including places like the Ritz and Claridge’s

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen

Mayfair is bordered on the south by Green Park, which, along with St. James’ Park forms the beautiful park area surrounding Buckingham Palace.

Now, I have never seen the Queen out walking, and in fact right now she is off on summer vacation, but I think if she was to walk, she would probably take a stroll along The Queen’s Walk in Green Park.

The Queen’s Walk was built by Queen Caroline, wife of King George II, as a walk towards the Queen’s Basin, a large reservoir in the park. The reservoir is gone now, filled in by Queen Victoria (I guess she wasn’t a fan of water), but the walk still exists today.

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect

The Trader Vic’s in London is in the Hilton Hotel just north of Hyde Park Corner in Mayfair, one of the many previously mentioned luxury hotels in the area.

While this was my first visit to the London brand of Trader Vic’s, I had been at a Trader Vic’s before when I was in Beverly Hills. No werewolves in Beverly Hills that I saw, though the place does have a few monsters of it’s own. Reconstructed by plastic surgery and kept alive by injections of platypus’s placentas and nightly sleeps in their oxygen chambers, some of the old codgers weren’t much more than Frankenstein’s Monster with better credit. The place is so image conscious that I can’t imagine a werewolf would have to spend long in Beverly Hills before someone would be suggesting a “really good doctor” to apply a course of laser hair removal treatments.

Trader Vic’s in London is much like Trader Vic’s in Los Angeles, in that it is a tacky Polynesian theme.

I had a Pina Colada, though I don’t think anyone mistook me for a werewolf. After spending a morning wandering around in the rain in Soho, my hair was much less than perfect.

Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor

I don’t know where werewolves have their clothes tailored, however if they really have perfect hair and hang out in bars in Mayfair, then they probably wear bespoke. In London, the place to buy your tailor made suits is Savile Row. Werewolves shopping in one of the many tailors along Savile Row could find themselves rubbing shoulders with Prince Charles, Daniel Craig and Jude Law.

Savile Row used to be a posh residential area, but like other areas in Mayfair, turned to commercial properties in the 18th century with tailors starting to populate the area. The area became well known for bespoke tailoring by 1846, when the “founder” of Savile Row, Mr. Henry Poole inherited his father’s tailoring business at No. 32.

As we continue into the new millennium, though, Savile Row is in danger. The rise of men’s fashion houses in France and Italy along with the rise of rents in central London threaten the existence of the tailors along the row. So get out there and buy your suits now, while you still can.

Good thing it was only a half moon. A full moon and I probably would have had my lungs ripped out.

Enjoy London, lycanthropes
Werewolves of London